Lagos based NGO, JAKIN initiative, has partnered with police and community leaders to put an end to the increasing issues of sexual abuse and rape in slum communities across Lagos State.
Tagged Community Centered Campaign against Rape and Sexual Abuse in Slums (3 CARS), the campaign which was sponsored by Canada Fund for Local Initiative focused on combating Rape and Sexual abuse issues in Makoko-Iwaya, Ajegunle/Amukoko/Badia, Abule Onipomi/Ilaje Otumara/ Otto communities in Lagos state.
The campaign which started in November focused on the creation of structures and means to ensure that the community takes ownership of rape and sexual abuse cases and also help provide community care, a support for rape and sexual abuse survivors.
In ensuring that communication was uinteruptedly passed across from survivors to authorities assigned to tackle the menace of sexual abuse and rape, in the communities covered by the project, the police, stakeholders and other relevant agencies, were given android phones, to ehance communication.
Speaking with journalist at the exit Symposium of the project, the President and CEO of JAKIN Initiative, Olubukola Adebiyi revealed that structures have been put in place to ensure that the battle against the menace of Rape and sexual abuse continues to thrive, as efforts were ongoing to make sure that the community leaders continue from where JAKIN NGO stops.
“The project started in November and it is a three to four months program, this particular activity is the last activity of the project,” She said.
Further speaking on the sustainability of the initiative as the NGO was embarking on its last phase of the Project, Mrs Adebiyi said “That’s the whole idea of the 3CARS committee, it is a community committee it doesn’t belong to us.
“What we did is that we trained 10 community stake holders and 10 ambassadors, making it 20. We’ve done advocacy to the community leaders and also the chairmen of local government, so they are now the ones that will take it up from there.
“We have circulated the community with adequate information and from here now they can go a step further. And luckily we have the United Nations Spot light initiative also coming up and they are also looking at community structures across Lagos state, Across Nigeria because we have UN parastatal that are involved in the project; UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA amongst others.
“They are also taking up another round of community involvement projects, there is going to be more and more saturation and from what the Ministry of Youth and Social Development has talked about, it is evident that the Lagos state Government is working extensively with community structure and so is the National Orientation Agency that is working with the spot light initiative to make sure that such structures are now sustained beyond initiators of the project.
“Now the whole essence of what we are doing in the 3CARS project is, how the community can take ownership of this kind of situation; how can we take ownership to tackle rape and sexual abuse and also get some justice for survivors and let our community be totally clean of such.”
Mrs Adebiyi, who disclosed that the next line of action for the NGO is to expand the project beyond the communities covered, revealed that the NGO was going to seek more support to scale up the campaign.
“What we have done now is a pilot so the next step is how we can scale up. Even for Lagos state we are only in two local governments and we have 20, so we are going to seek more support to have this scaled up and with spotlight initiative coming in, supported by the United Nations with National Orientation Agency, they are going to even escalate it beyond what JAKIN can do,” she said.
Commending and congratulating JAKIN NGO for a job well done, Marion St-Cyr Lachance, the representative of the Sponsors (CFLI), who doubled as the secretary to the High Commissioner of Canada in Nigeria revealed that the commission was proud of partnering with the NGO for the first time and looked forward to many more partnership.
“We are really proud that we are partnering with JAKIN for the first time, I hope we will have many more partnership in that area, “she said.
